23-year-old goes from homeless teen to degree at UCLA

For clothing, she had two pairs of pants and three shirts. For food, she had Cheetos she bought at the discount store, and 50-cent tacos from Jack in the Box.

For shelter, she had her car, someone's drafty garage, the floor of a friend's apartment.

Harris, 23, graduates from the University of California, Los Angeles, today with a degree in African-American studies. She plans to attend law school.

Her triumph seemed unlikely just a few years ago, when she was a homeless teenager attending Weston Ranch High School and, later, San Joaquin Delta College. After all, it's hard to plan your life for years in advance when you have no idea where you'll lay down your head tonight.

Or, as Harris put it: "There's no point in waiting four years for college when you can work at Taco Bell tomorrow."

She chose the longer path. How she finished when so many others fall short, she can't exactly explain, though she credits God and a handful of helpers she met along the way.

"At the end of the day, it's the ability to say, 'What I am going to get is going to be better than what I am experiencing right now,' " Harris said.

She grew up in Oakland. Her father was absent. She has few memories of her mother, who was addicted to drugs.

Harris was sent to live with her aunt, and the two moved to Stockton in 2004, seeking to escape the violence and poverty.

For a while, it was better. They bought a house in Weston Ranch. Harris's aunt commuted to Oakland, where she worked as a nurse.

But the housing crisis struck about the same time Harris's aunt endured triple-bypass surgery and could no longer work.

Harris, then a junior at Weston Ranch, suddenly found herself not only struggling to complete schoolwork, but also taking care of her aunt. She was almost expelled for tardiness.

Then, with no income except for a monthly guardianship check, Harris and her aunt were ordered by the bank to abandon their house by Nov. 26, 2007.

"I remember reading that," Harris said. "We had to be out of there, and we had nowhere to go."

The two put most of their belongings in a storage locker and began living out of the car. Eventually Harris' aunt went to a homeless shelter, but Harris refused to follow her, worried she would be placed in a group home and forced to change schools.

At Weston Ranch, Harris went on like nothing was wrong. She had friends and served as yearbook editor, although what no one knew is she couldn't afford to buy one herself.

She felt alone.

She soon realized she wasn't.

When Harris decided that the Army was her only option after high school, Weston Ranch Spanish teacher Andres Treviņo urged her to consider attending Delta College instead. She agreed. Together, they sat down to fill out a financial aid form.

Treviņo himself was a first-generation college student. "I tried to help her out when she was frustrated with school," said Treviņo, who plans to attend her graduation at UCLA. "I tried to remind her it was going to be stressful, but that it was going to be OK."

And it was, thanks to other helpers who materialized along the way.

At Delta College, Harris was steered almost immediately toward a grant-funded program to support black students, whose success rates at the college are significantly lower than some other ethnic groups.

There, Harris met Dee Brown, the program leader, whose motherly ways helped fill a void Harris had felt much of her life. Brown, who is also black, proved an inspiration.

"I saw people who were like myself, in positions I had never seen them in before," Harris said.

Eventually, she was hired to assist Brown under a work-study program, earning enough money to finally get an apartment. She would finish her time at Delta College mentoring other black students from similar backgrounds.

Then it was on to UCLA and law school and who knows what else.

"I hope she's an attorney when I need one," Brown, now retired, said with a laugh. "I could not ask for any more competent person to plead my case.

"Cristal gives very little credit to herself," Brown added. "She's humble. But within her, Cristal has a determination, a strong sense of 'I can do it.' That just needed to be brought to the surface."

Harris just returned from a study program in Washington, D.C., and is now looking into law school. She is especially interested in civil rights and housing discrimination law.

Her mother won't be there to celebrate her commencement today. That's OK with Harris, because if Weston Ranch High and Delta College taught her anything, it's that family isn't limited to bloodline.

"I hope one day I can talk to her, get to know her as a person," Harris said. "Honestly, I've forgiven her. But I'm not missing out on her; she's missing out on me."